I haven’t written in awhile. I lost my voice about a year ago. Or, at least it feels that long. I know I have written in that time, but definitely not the way I once did. The words are in my head, but my voice has simply up and left.

I lost my faith, it didn’t just waiver. It left with my voice. A sense of shame began to fill the gaps where God and the Word had once been nestled in. The freefall into a darkness overcame me, it’s still the cloak that covers me, brings me comfort in a place where there is no comfort to be had.

Sickness had me down and out a lot at the end of 2016 and I know it was my bodies way of protesting and saying I had fallen. I just didn’t want to believe it.

I grew pregnant in very late winter/early spring and miscarried, alone, several months later. I was too ashamed to tell anyone. Not my mom, not even the babies father. I wanted to hold onto that baby and keep it as mine. Only mine. A gift that God had given to just me. A gift that only I would love for the rest of my days.

I didn’t even tell my doctor until the fall. Perhaps because I was so adamant that I would keep this baby to myself forever, perhaps because I didn’t want the sympathy or the always unwanted and cold “you can always try again” type of comments.

Maybe I can try again, but I won’t. And, even if by some miracle that I do end up with someone else, and we do have a child, that child will never replace any of the babies I have lost. It will never erase the weeks I knew they were growing inside of me. The hopes and dreams I had for that specific child are forever gone. That baby will never be born, it will never inhale its first breath, or look into my eyes. It will never hear my voice outside of what they may have heard from inside of my womb, the muffled underwater sounds that budding ears were barely beginning to hear.

It felt like in those moments, months, of loneliness and being abandoned, that God up and abandoned me too. I don’t know who I am. I don’t know what I am. I no longer feel like a child of God. I feel a hollow space where feelings should be, where love should overflow, but I don’t feel God.

My heart rate rises and the vile comes up my throat and into my mouth. I choke it back as the images of her beaten lifeless body fill my screen, I can hear the words in my head, the screams that came from her as she fought for her life as he literally snuffs her light out, letting the smoke rise and the flame flicker in a cat and mouse game before holding the snuffer down and extinguishing her flame forever.

Her family in the next room claiming they didn’t hear a thing, they didn’t know he was abusive despite the broken door and the screamed name calling.

It hasn’t happened yet. But it will. It’s happened thousands of times before. A jealous rage caused by nothingness sending the grim reaper in and stealing a life away far too soon, for no reason.

Oh, I suppose there is always a reason. She hurt his ego, he thought she was cheating. She didn’t get breakfast ready on time. So many ‘good’ reasons to abuse, to kill. Hell, I was thrown down the stairs into the basement while nearly 8 months pregnant because I commented that his socks looked dirty. And to think, I was “lucky”.

So, when I hear this “fantastic” news it makes me sick. This is her future now and its out of my hands. No one can save her, maybe not even herself. Maybe I should stand by and be her friend despite her choice to stay, even though nearly every day for 18 months I have heard of the abuse and she has never made a change. Should I continue to allow my heart to break every single day at her expense when this is what she chooses?

I mean, she has told me “if I die, you know more than anyone else, don’t let him get away with it”.

And yet, she stays.

You can call it lazy or sexist or whatever you want. The fact is, its all the above, but most importantly, it’s abuse. She deserves to be loved. She deserves to be treated like a Princess and revered like a Queen. She deserves to be loved, honoured and cherished, and not in words between abuse, but in action every single day.

A queen.

A princess.

Not a piece of meat, or like my captor used to say, Chattel to be kept or sold as he sees fit -a slave.

I want better for her. For all men and women who are being abused. I want their eyes to open and the doors to freedom to open. It’s 2017. That shouldn’t be too much to ask, but still, it is.

I sit and want to curse the cursor that is blinking at me, taunting me to express the thoughts that are on my mind. The flick-flick a mockery of my current state. Confused, angry, exhausted, physical pain that nears a 10 and medications that don’t want to help me, nothing has ever helped me, nothing ever will.

The swelling that woke me 6 times in the night still leaving remnants of stiffness in my hands -the fingers that could once fly across the keyboard tapping away about 100 words a minute seem sluggish and nearly useless. I know it’s not even bad, yet. I also know it will be worse. My body deteriorating as I age is inevitable.

If you know me, you know I push people away. I don’t trust myself to trust others, not with my heart. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I give it wholly, but then I panic and my fight or flight kicks in because in my life everything good has come to an abrupt end. I try to be ahead of the game, ahead of the soon to come let downs of pain of abandonment and loneliness that only love can inflict, and I become the one to run first. Heavily guarded like an armoured tank. The weapons on my tongue, the vault around my heart.

Yeah, so I am not here to preach or talk about tv or current affairs. I am not here to tell myself it will all be okay. I am not here to tell you it will be either. I am simply here to brain dump. To get the feelings out of my head so that they become real – at least to the page.

I want to be a person of the page again. Someone who writes it all out regularly. Who counts their thousand gifts and surpasses them each year, because, let’s face it there are more than a thousand things in a year that we should be grateful for. I don’t know why I stopped.

I’ve stopped a lot of things.

I’ve stopped looking forward to later. All I see is the blood red splatter that signifies straight up pain.

It’s like I had a taste of life and suddenly lost my appetite. No rhyme or reason. Though, I suppose there are plenty of reasons, many of which I haven’t processed yet.

A grief that has become all-encompassing that eats at me moment by moment.

The pain and discomfort my body and mind experienced in those days of loss that I tucked under the figurative rug to try and keep others from being hurt, maybe even not wanting to share my one little treasure with the world. All mine. Pure selfishness. But, I loved… and it hurt.

It all hurts, every single day.

I won’t ever get over loss. I won’t ever move on or get over it like many suggest. Maybe because I don’t want to, maybe because letting go of the past scares me because I don’t ever want to not bring those preciously painful memories with me. They are all I have.

Life is going to bring you down, and yet that pain is all I know, it’s all I have.

I don’t want to talk. I don’t want to be a part of anything -big or small. The pain inside seems to stem from nowhere and everywhere all at once and I don’t know how to bear it, or if I want to. The nectar flowing through my veins warms me, puts a crooked smile on my face and belly laughs that hide the fact the tears are real.

Anxiety causes my heart to race and wakes me from the peace of not feeling at all. I wish I could make it stop, but nothing can, and I won’t hold my breath that death will cause it to end either. Crazy thing about eternal life is the eternal damnation.

I am damned.

You can’t punish me more than I punish myself. You can’t make the hurt more painful than it already is. Nothing can.

So, I laugh and I play and I beg God to take me back… but he won’t, because fallen angels never go back. We may earn our wings, but only to carry our own sins. Floating through eternity in air dense as mud.

I would question my sanity, if I had any left.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…I watched the sunset and stayed to watch it rise, and then I said goodbye to the light- knowing it was my last.

The darkness of the country sky is broken by the blinking coloured light of a plane flying slowly by. Hundreds of miles high, moving faster than the inches from 4 feet below ground can see.

The cat cutting through the earphones as she kills a mouse, or a string or an elastic band. The music playing my own voice -Foolish Games, Hallelujah… Unsteady…

The pen and the paper have met many times over the last weeks, but the cursor continues to be cursed, blinking tauntingly at my weathered soul, begging for me to reveal to the world the depths of the holes that penetrate so far and wide that not even light can traverse the jagged mass.

Every breath I take hurts my soul, knowing its breath that I no longer want. My pain in my body can be dulled by the medications, but the pain in my soul has nowhere to go, nothing to take it away. I find myself in doubt. Questioning existence, torture, pain and beg the question why?

I’ve searched psychology books, history books, the Bible and my own faith and all that stands out to me is when Job says, “I have no rest, for trouble comes” because trouble always comes.

Only, now I ask myself, am I the trouble? Am I the cause of the pain? Do I bring this hurt upon myself? Do I beg it into my life instead of goodness and strength? Have I subconsciously killed away the children that once grew in my womb? Washing them out to punish myself… Can the subconscious mind even do that? Can mind really kill matter? Can mind end the life of another, stop the heart from having another beat?

Did I do this to myself? I can’t help but believe I did.

I deserve to be punished. I deserve to hurt. I deserve to choke on the tears of grief that can no longer be swallowed back. “I hurt myself today, to see if I still feel”, and the saddest part is I often don’t.

I am reckless. I am on the edge of a cliff unable to step back from the dangerous edge and begging to be pushed forward into the ending gravitational pull.

No one understands me because I simply don’t understand myself.

Life with depression, anxiety, and feeling like your value is only held in the hands of others is no way to live at all. Some days, I wonder if I am living at all. Most days I know I am not.

A heartless heart shattered broke
The drugs wore heavy, my sheltered cloak
Feet on walls above aching head
It’s you I crave and fear I dread
Closing in the walls and ceiling
Too much to know how I’m feeling
The sound of silence too much to bear
Did you lie your love or even care?
My leaded ink marked for good
Removing things an eraser never could
Laughter, smiles, jokes and cries
Emotions are the life I despise
I look at tear stained cheeks, mark my prey
We won’t survive another day

Born and raised in Kenora, Ontario Canada, Marisa was a teen mom who has overcome incredible circumstances in order to provide the best life she can for her small family. Avid reader, blogger and a God-loving Christian, are just a few of the titles Marisa holds. Reading the Word and learning about God and His plans for her life are her current mission.